Tenure, a hotly debated education policy lever, is often viewed as a component of a teacher’s overall compensation package, meaning that teachers might accept lower salaries in exchange for the greater job security tenure has to offer.
A study out of Louisiana by Katharine Strunk, Nathan Barrett, and Jane Arnold Lincove examines how the removal of tenure, as some states have done, impacts teacher retention and if the removal of tenure affects different groups of students.
Finding that the number of teachers who resigned did increase slightly after tenure was eliminated, the attrition was more likely to occur in the weaker schools. Essentially, where accountability pressures are high, the lack of job security that tenure implies appears to cause more teachers to leave. Attrition rates were higher among teachers who lost protections (those with at least the four years of teaching previously required to earn tenure in Louisiana) compared to those that never had tenure as well as among teachers who were eligible to retire versus those who were not.
When examining the analysis of which students were affected by this policy change, the study found there were no differential rates of teacher attrition in the least or most disadvantaged schools when taking into account the proportion of students of color, student proficiency rates, or student growth. In fact, they found suggestive evidence (significant in one of the two years examined) that teachers in schools with the most low-income students were less likely to exit as a result of the removal of tenure, explained perhaps by the fact that such schools have larger numbers of newer teachers who would not have qualified yet for tenure had it existed.
However, teachers in F-rated schools were approximately two percentage points more likely to exit the workforce compared to teachers in A-rated schools (a statistically significant finding), demonstrating that without any type of additional incentive or compensation teacher attrition will certainly increase in already challenging schools.
When states or districts consider policy changes to increase teacher quality, this study appears to suggest that Louisiana should have coupled its new tenure-free policy with a set of policies that would have rewarded and incentivized demonstrated effectiveness or retention. These incentives would be particularly useful for staffing harder-to-staff schools, offsetting more difficult working conditions or increasing the overall compensation package. In effect, there are various ways to achieve teacher recruitment and retention outside of tenure and survey evidence suggests that teachers are ready to make this trade.
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Benefits of ambivalence: A new tenure policy holds promise for student gains
Policy fixes are necessary to lay the groundwork for change, but it’s
in the implementation of those policies where the rubber meets the road.
Since 2009, a lot of states have made changes to their tenure laws,
including New York. In that state, new policy changed what happens after new
teachers complete the three-year probationary period, requiring school leaders
to review the “candidate’s effectiveness over the applicable probationary
period in contributing to the successful academic performance of his or her
students” before tenure is granted. Did that new law and its dogged
implementation by Joel Klein, et al., in New York City make any
difference?
Perhaps so. Research released by Susanna Loeb, Luke Miller and James Wyckoff found not only that the district currently
awards tenure to far fewer teachers than it once did, but also that the quality
of the overall teacher applicant pool showed a marked improvement: a struggling
teacher who left the system after the district decided to delay its tenure
decision was, on average, replaced by a measurably better teacher.
Interestingly, when the district told teachers it was not ready to make
a tenure decision (delaying for a year as the law allows), those teachers were
50 percent more likely to transfer schools and 66 percent more likely to leave
the system than teachers who were awarded tenure. These findings showcase that
just the act of delaying the tenure
decision can result in presumably weaker teachers self-selecting an option that
may be better suited for them (and consequently their students).
New York is particularly interesting because
districts in the state can keep delaying their tenure decisions for as long as
they like. Data below highlight what happened to the 1,369 teachers whose
tenure was extended in the 2011-2012 school year (623 had at least one
extension previously) in the following school year.
Source:
http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2013/08/27/tenure-crunch-continues-but-just-41-teachers-denied-on-first-try/#.VBsN1fldUcA
Questions remain about how multiple tenure extensions will affect the
overall quality of the teacher pool. Do teachers who receive a second or a
third extension leave at even greater rates than those here did after receiving
a first? Are they continually being replaced by more effective teachers, as happened
in this instance? While a seemingly never-ending extension policy is not a good
idea (at some point you have to cut bait), if teachers choose to leave at
greater rates every time they get another extension and are consistently
replaced by more effective teachers, then the city’s overall teacher quality
should increase – unless a law of diminishing returns is at work.
With these questions in mind, initial data certainly suggests some real
benefits for the quality of the teacher workforce.
However, an earlier policy change complicates this picture, perhaps
amplifying the positive outcomes that may be tempting to attribute only to the
change in the tenure policy and Klein’s implementation. At the same time, New York City also stopped the practice
of force placing teachers who had been “excessed,” allowing
principals the right to refuse to take in a displaced teacher. Since the excess
pool is (by reputation, at least) a dumping ground for low-performing teachers,
their absence from the teaching pool may also contribute to the finding that
new teachers are more effective than those they replace. But given other
factors at play (including a hiring freeze that took effect the same year as
the new tenure policy, in which Chancellor Klein required principals to hire teachers
from the Absent Teacher Reserve Pool), it seems fair to say that this policy does
not wholly explain the positive change in the applicant pool.
Timeline
of major teacher quality policies in New York City, 2005-2006 to 2014-2015
It’s unlikely that the
new union-friendly NYC schools administration will continue Klein’s tenure and
excess policies, as neither was something the union favored. In any case, this study
is especially timely as two lawsuits (modeled after the famous Vergara v. California case) that attack
teacher policies such as tenure and last in, first out layoffs, have been filed
in New York. One side or the other
is bound to bring up this research– but oddly enough, it’s not clear which
side it helps.